What does it take to break the blind motorbiking speed record? [ Guardian Record Article ]
Ian Sample
Thursday August 7, 2003
The Guardian
A box of electronics, faith in your team mates, one of the fastest production bikes on the planet and real guts.
On Saturday, on a runway at RAF Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, blind biker Billy Baxter obliterated the existing blind motorcycling speed record of 78.4mph. Followed closely by two outriders from the Royal Artillery motorcycle display team, Baxter clocked a top speed of 164.8mph on a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R, which is evidently a powerful motorbike.
Baxter, who is 39, lost his sight to a rare virus in 1997 while serving with the Royal Horse Guard Artillery in Bosnia. "I was mortified when I lost my sight," says Baxter. "I wasn't happy not being able to do all the things I enjoyed doing, and I'd ridden motorbikes since I was 12." Baxter decided to have a crack at the record to raise money for St Dunstan's, the charity that cares for blind ex-servicemen.
Baxter's training involved practicing how to crouch into the best position so his body wouldn't interrupt the flow of air around the bike when he was hurtling down the runway. "I had to practice with the bike on a stand in the garage. I had people telling me if I was well tucked in. I felt a right banana," he says.
Baxter says that once the bike is going, the gyroscopic effect of the wheels keeps it stable and upright, so he concentrated his efforts on making sure he didn't destabilise the bike by making clumsy gear changes or applying the brakes unevenly.
Before having a stab at the record, Baxter's bike was fitted with a GPS receiver the size of a packet of cigarettes so that his position could be tracked. A memory card that slotted into the receiver recorded his position and the time he started and finished each attempt. Downloading the data to a laptop after each run gave Baxter's top speed.
Tracking Baxter's position precisely was paramount. "For the record attempt to be valid, Guinness stipulate that you must be getting signals from at least three GPS satellites," says Baxter. "On the day, there were at least eight satellites within sight, which meant they could work out my position to within 3cm."
Baxter and the two riders who followed him on each record attempt had three-way radios in their helmets so that they could speak to each other. One rider follows from behind. "He told me whether to go left a bit or right a bit, which I did just by shifting my weight," says Baxter. The other rider rides alongside as a precaution. "If the communications went down, his job was to pull up by me and tap me to tell me to stop," says Baxter.
He says that, even though he couldn't see how fast he was going and couldn't hear much either, it was still extraordinarily exhilarating. "My brain was saying, old son, you shouldn't be doing this."
The most dangerous part was slowing down, he says. After covering 400m in less than seven seconds, it took Baxter a mile to slow down and stop.
"When they say, 'Start braking,' you just want to grab hold of the brakes, stop the damn thing, and get off and run away. But you've got to stay on it, maintain your composure, until you can bring it gently to a stop."
----------------
Posted to the MRVN Delphi Forum: October 14, 2004
